EA has used dedicated servers as a catapult from which to hurl challenges at Activision's Call of Duty dominance in recent years. Famously, Modern Warfare 2 decided not to have dedicated servers on PC - a bullet-point EA leapt on and exploited.

Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops did have dedicated servers on PC, however - but they also required paying for.

On PC, dedicated servers - machines focused only on hosting a match, not participating - are commonplace. But on console they're not. Epic Games will be among the first to buck this trend with Gears of War 3, which will provide Microsoft-hosted dedicated multiplayer servers.

The benefits are no automatic lag advantage for a hosting player, and usually better overall performance, as dedicated servers are beefy machines with industrial-grade net connections.